The Five Tibetans Yoga Workshop by Susan Westbrook

Author:Susan Westbrook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Findhorn Press

Fear and Grasping

One of my primary goals in writing this book was to give you a safe place to look deeply at behaviors that are holding you back from your greatest calling and your most fulfilling connections. (If it is any comfort, I have spent a good year now being confronted by these same reckonings.) We have identified grasping as a primary agent in the beliefs and actions that limit growth and impact. Grasping can show itself as a need for control when we fear situations and relationships that could potentially require us to confront uncomfortable emotional feelings, such as rejection, disappointment, and failure.

Our compulsion to control our circumstances is a sign that we are deeply attached to the outcomes. We are also equating our safety and well-being with what someone else does or says. Needing to control the outcome is a sign that we do not feel confident enough within ourselves to withstand the personal power of another person. We hang onto our “musts” and “shoulds.” We make up rules for ourselves and others. We are convinced that we can leave nothing to anyone else, not even God, a practice that Parker Palmer calls “functional atheism.” We believe that if we are not in control of the circumstances, something bad will inevitably occur.

Our fear of losing control will also limit the depth of our connections and communication with the people around us. Intimacy puts us at too great a risk. We cannot afford to delve into knowing the deepest hopes and fears of another human being—not only might it be scary but we also cannot hazard the possibility of a comparison; we certainly cannot risk letting them know us. We keep our gifts, feelings, and thoughts close to the vest. Given that we cannot trust what is in us and around us, we cannot commit ourselves to a life with another human being. Or, maybe we cannot even fathom having a best friend. Any person capable of breaking down our need to control the situation will be seen as a threat. Any situation that might lead to rejection or embarrassment must be avoided. If this pattern persists over a lifetime, we will find our emotional growth stunted and our relationships shallow or nonexistent. Fear can, quite literally, take our lives away.

Bibi, a friend of mine who works with older people at the end of their lives, recently shared with me that she believes our character or individuality is a manifestation of the way we cope with our fears in life. After spending a few seconds being jealous that she thought of it instead of me, I was struck by how true it is.

In her view, we wear a cloak that shields us from our fears. You might also think of it as a mask. As we get older and become more able to lay aside our fears, the cloak gets thinner. We are more able to be our true selves. It is such an amazing picture of how our fears determine how we live our lives.

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